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Authors: Marsha Altman

BOOK: The Road to Pemberley
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Darcy extended his hand for the letters, saw the handwriting, and exclaimed, “Smithen!”
“All right,” Smithen said from the back of the church. “So you've found me out, but you'll do nothing.”
I looked back and saw him, unsteadily, point a gun at me. “I will shoot you dead if you take a step toward me!” he said.
“You forgot you left me nothing to live for!” I yelled.
The gun moved toward Darcy. Darcy took an inflexible step toward Smithen, all the same. “If you shoot,” Darcy snarled, “you'd better be very sure of hitting me, for you have only one shot in your weapon. And after that, I'll be on you.”
“All right!” Smithen yelled. “Then her.” He pointed his pistol at Georgiana. “Take another step toward me, and I will shoot her.”
The baron, Georgiana's would-be groom, made a sound like a whimper, removed a lace kerchief from his pocket, and dabbed at his brow, while staring at Smithen.
But Georgiana had the blood of the Darcys in her veins, the very same Darcys who had once opposed a furious Henry VIII. She stood straight all of a sudden, and she took a step forward, away from Elizabeth Darcy.
“You are evil,” she told Smithen. “And all evil will be punished.”
Smithen laughed. It was a deranged sound. “Not today,” he said. And pulled the trigger.
I jumped forward, not quite knowing what I was doing. I jumped in the path of the bullet, knowing only—without thinking—that I must save Georgiana. Georgiana must not die.
The ball smashed into my shoulder. I felt it crush though skin and flesh and bone. I heard screams. I felt something warm down the front of my traveling jacket. Cold spread from my shoulder to my chest. I could not speak. Breathing hurt. My legs felt like running water. I fell.
At the back of the church, there was a scuffle, the sound of fists hitting flesh. But I was all beyond it then. I noted that Georgiana's groom was on the floor also, seemingly unconscious. I wondered if he'd been hit, too.
But Georgiana was by my side, her fingers fluttering softly on my jacket, her voice as commanding and stern as Lady Catherine at her worst, “Bring lights, someone bring lights. And a knife to cut his
jacket. And a tourniquet. Quick, man, put pressure on the wound. He's bleeding his heart out. A doctor. Send for the doctor.
Now!
”
Other hands were doing things to me. It didn't matter. Georgiana, concerned and lovely, standing amid a wealth of satin stained with my blood, looked down on me with gentle tenderness. Suddenly, her lips touched mine—a moment of heaven. I tasted salt on them. Why was she crying? It was just me, and I did not matter.
“You must live, my love,” she said. “You must live for me. For
us.
”
“My love.” I took those words with me into darkness.
I woke up hours later, in my old room at Pemberley. The doctor had patched me up admirably. The valet—obviously not Smithen—who'd been left with me till I woke told me how Miss Georgiana had refused to marry the baron, who'd been so cowardly as to faint at the sight of blood. She'd said, in front of everyone in church, she'd only agreed to marry him because she thought her true love was a villain. Now that she'd been proved wrong, she'd marry for love or not at all.
And Smithen had been on the point of arrest, for fraud and conspiracy and attempted murder, when he turned his pistol on himself, spraying his brains over the walls of the ancient chapel at Pemberley.
Darcy—well, the valet, a good lad of maybe fifteen, wouldn't say anything even ironic about his master. But it was clear from what the valet did say that Darcy was shaken and oddly contrite. Oddly contrite for Darcy, of course.
“He muttered much about his abominable pride that didn't allow him to look behind the seeming facts for the truth,” the valet said.
I nodded and started pulling myself up on the bed. “Where are they now?” I asked. “Have they retired?”
“To bed? No. No one has gone to bed. The guests are perhaps in bed in their wing, but in the family wing, no one has gone to bed. Although they're not in the drawing room, and I'm not quite sure…”
I knew then where they were. I knew for a certainty. Sitting on the bed, I looked about for clothes to make myself decent. I spotted a dressing gown thrown over an easy chair by the window. It was blue and silk and I was sure it belonged to Darcy. How kind of him to share. “Give me my dressing gown, man. Quickly.”
The valet stared. “Sir, I—” He swallowed.
“Come on,” I said. “The dressing gown. Be quick about it.”
“Sir, the doctor said as you weren't supposed to get up.”
“Boil the doctor,” I said. “What does he know?” I had to see Georgiana. I had to talk to Darcy. I had to make sure this wasn't all a fevered dream.
“But sir—” the valet said.
“Now.”
He obeyed. Although reluctantly, he obeyed with—it occurred to me—far more alacrity than was owed Wickham, the son of auld Wickham, estate manager for the Darcys.
His hands trembled as he held the robe up for me. “Only, Mr. Darcy said nothing was to happen to you, for you had been his brother. And before the month was out, chances were you'd be his brother again.”
My chest expanded as I grinned. The pain in my shoulder meant nothing. “If you want to keep me safe, you'll help me walk downstairs.”
“Downstairs, sir?”
“To Mrs. Reynold's sitting room,” I said, and grinned at his astonished expression. Clearly, he didn't know that had been our childhood refuge, where the kind lady had fed us milk and chocolate biscuits and listened to all our tales.
But Darcy and Georgiana knew. And I knew where to find them.
“But why would Smithen do it?” Darcy asked.
We sat, all three of us, around Mrs. Reynold's table, as we had when we were small children. Elizabeth Darcy, lovely if disheveled, leaned against the doorsill, in her dressing gown, looking—not left out—but bewildered, as our voices and manners acquired the ease of childhood again.
She was probably having trouble adjusting to the thought that I was no villain. I didn't mind. She would get used to it. Darcy had married a smart woman.
Mrs. Reynold had fed us cookies and was pouring the second glass of milk for Georgiana. She gave Darcy a concerned look, as if hesitating about what to tell him.
“I always treated him well,” Darcy said. “Didn't I, Wickham? Did I fail in something I ought to have done?”
Mrs. Reynold turned a concerned look on me. She sighed. She set down the milk jug and sat in her chair, at the corner. “It wasn't either of you,” she said. “Or Miss Georgiana either.” She sighed. “It was Mr. Wickham's father.”
“My…father?” I asked.
“Aye, sir, you must understand, your father didn't want to marry again and subject you to the whims of a stepmother, but he was still a young man with…needs. It is said—and I've heard it from her own mouth—he went down to Bessie Smithen at the tavern. That child of hers, hedge-born, as it were…Well, your father got him a position as a gardener boy, and then Mr. Darcy had him transferred inside. But you must see, Mr. Wickham, he was your brother all along, and he resented that you were treated as a brother of Mr. Darcy's and he was not.”
“Envy,” Darcy said, and sighed. “Oh, I should have known. And that's why you two look so much alike,” he said.
A twinge of pain suddenly stabbed my shoulder, and I winced.
Georgiana put her hand on my forearm. “You should be in bed. But as soon as you can stand up with me in church, I shall be Mrs. Wickham.”
“And we'll help with whatever you need for the little girl,” Darcy said. “And her education. She is our niece through her mother, after all.”
Elizabeth Darcy nodded, by the door.
“And mine through her father,” I said. “You know, I believe Lydia thought it was me in her bed.”
Elizabeth nodded. “She probably did. She was not the most observant woman around, poor Lydia.”
“And the living at Kimpton?” I asked Darcy. “Will you reconsider it, Will? Now that you know the truth?”
“The living at Kimpton?” Darcy asked, with that tilting sneer to his lip. “I wouldn't dream of it.”
“But—” I said.
“Not for my brother-in-law. You must keep Georgiana in the style she's used to. There are some lands I'll make over to you both, and Georgiana, of course, brings ten thousand in dowry. We'll fix up the old manor house at the other end of the farm, shall we? That way, you two will be near enough to visit, but not so near it will be like living in the same house.”
“When do you think you can stand up in church with me?” Georgiana asked.
I stood. “Why, now, if you wish.” The room swam before my eyes, but I would not give way.
Darcy laughed, looking easier than he had since childhood. “My sister and my best friend are not to be married in the middle of the night, like fugitives. Sit down, you fool.”
I sat, with relief. Georgiana's arms held me, helped ease me down. Mrs. Reynold gave me another biscuit and poured milk for me.
And a feeling of great ease and happiness suffused me. I had Georgiana's love and Will's friendship.
I had come home.
A Long, Strange Trip
BY ELLEN GELERMAN
Ellen Gelerman
was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and spent much of her adult life there. She received her BA in English from Indiana University, leading to a lifelong love of English literature as well as a twenty-five-year career as an advertising copywriter. Though she is largely retired from her formal career, writing is still her passion; she has created many stories based on
Pride and Prejudice
, including several booklength works, and she is working on a manuscript for an original novel. She currently lives in Connecticut with her husband, two college-age children, and two Labrador retrievers, and enjoys volunteering as a teacher of English for speakers of other languages.
“A Long Strange Trip” is indeed a very strange story, and the only story in this collection to violate the events of
Pride and Prejudice
. I read it when it was first published a few years ago, liked it a great deal, and when I was perusing the short stories available for the anthology, I immediately said, “This
has
to go in.” There's simply nothing else like it. I hope you will see why.
HISTORICAL NOTE: According to the BBC, the first documented use of psychedelic mushrooms was published in the
Medical and Physical Journal
: In 1799, a man who had been picking mushrooms for breakfast in London's Green Park included them in his harvest,
accidentally sending his entire family on a trip. The doctor who treated them later described how the youngest child “was attacked with fits of immoderate laughter, nor could the threats of his father or mother refrain him.” From the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, under the entry “Psilocybin Mushroom.”

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